About Architecture Rule!

The purpose of this blog is to become the Belgian & Luxembourg community blog of people interested in IT architecture in the broad sense of the word and having a particular interest for MS related architectural matters. Your interaction will be greatly appreciated and I hope to meet a lot of you in person in the months and years to come!

Today Steve Ballmer kicked of the //build conference in San Francisco CA and I am sure you can read all about it over the net. However despite the real cool new features mentioned for Windows 8.1 our main interest went into what’s new for Visual Studio...

When building a line-of-business (LOB) app there are numerous things to consider. Of course you need a great user experience, but what about validating user input, user authentication, how do you deal with application state across suspend-resume...

We want to give you a push in the back to develop great applications – join the Windows 8 App Race and win: How to win Your app(s) need to be published between April 1 and June 15, 2013 . Complete the contest form(s) on http://aka.ms/race . There is no...

Today we announced the general availability of our Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) support! With this release Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Network move out of Preview and are now ready to use for your production apps. With Azure...

Windows 8 is a Windows re-imagined designed for both touch and keyboard. It is a mobile cloud-powered system which makes it easy to keep people connected and across multiple devices while leveraging the power of all the new capabilities of today’s hardware...

Join us in Brussels, Genk, Kortrijk or Mons on March 27 th for the 4-locations Belgian Windows 8 first Superhackathon . Code, build, eat, drink & win. Experts will be on site to help you with the last phase of building your first Windows 8 or Windows...

Join top international and local speakers who can't wait to share their excitement with you about Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012, Windows Azure, Windows Phone 8, HTML5 ... and much more! We're very happy to announce the following top speakers for...

The app market is here to stay. Are you ready to talk Apps? Are you ready to design Apps? Are you ready to develop Apps? Don’t miss the first Windows App Day , packed with national and international speakers to talk about App Development, User...

With the introduction of apps and application stores, the process of building, selling and distributing software has been truly democratized. But what if your application becomes a top hit and is being downloaded and used by millions of users? ...

Eat. Drink. Code. Join us at HUB on November 10 th . Belgium is part of the app revolution! By registering, you’ll be joining thousands of developers worldwide as we build apps for the next generation of Windows. Microsoft app experts, MEET-members, developers...

Join us next week (October 8, 2012) at Microsoft Belgium for a free full day training for advanced Windows 8 coders . You’ve finished your first app or are about to finish it and you’re ready for the next level? We have the perfect training you have been...

October 26 is getting closer and closer … is your Windows 8 app ready? You’re invited to the last app-a-thon before Windows 8 hits the market. Join us at our offices in Zaventem on September 28! Team up with your best UX or developer friend to build a...

The re-imagined Windows 8 will come soon, and people will love playing games on it. Getting your game into the Windows Store prior to the launch on October 26, will bring you some key benefits: With Windows 8 in full spotlight, your app will gain maximal...

We hope you have already enjoyed a bit of sunshine this summer! We sure did at the first Summer App-a-thon in Blankenberge with a full day of coding & fun topped with a great show of fresh Win8 Metro apps! Grasp the first-mover advantage too and make...

It's summertime! Time for all of us to throw ourselves into something new, fun and rewarding. With Windows 8 around the corner, now is the time to start building apps ! Will your app be the next big thing? Grasp that first-mover advantage and make sure...

The Microsoft Imagine Cup brings together students from all over the world and asks them to use their creativity and passion for technology to help solve the world’s toughest problems. Back in May you could read that 2 of our Belgian teams made it to...

The word is out: on July 12 we’ll be organizing the first of our Summer App-a-thons. And it’s going to be a special, seaside app-a-thon, at the Belgian coast in Blankenberge . What could be more inspiring for building great Metro-style apps...

Yesterday, Microsoft announced previews of new Windows Azure services that help developers build applications that connect data to users across public and private clouds, take advantage of VHDs and deploy scalable websites quickly and cheaply. Today...

Windows 8 Release Preview has been made available last week, representing another important quality milestone in the road to Windows 8 General Availability (GA). In this post we provide you with the must-know information around what and where to download...

Last week the Microsoft Windows Store blog announced an expansion of the Windows Store coming soon. By the next milestone of Windows 8, the preview release of Windows Store will include new markets and new languages. Currently Windows Store includes five...

Combining the broad reach of Windows, best-in-class developer tools, a reimagined user experience, support for new chipsets, and a built-in Store with industry-leading business terms - Windows 8 is the largest developer opportunity, ever. But now what...

Now is the time to register for the upcoming Windows 8 Metro Style Apps events. In this post you can find a summary of the main activities, for which you can find an updated view on our Metro Map . Windows Camps at Microsoft and the Innovation Centers...

If you missed TechDays 2012 in Belgium (Braine l’Alleud), there is no way to bring you back the whole 10th anniversary experience . That’s the bad news, the good news however is that we go a long way and bring you a recorded video of each of the sessions...

Night owl or day bird? Or rather both? Join us for the day-track to immerse and/or the night-track to start building! Windows 8 Consumer Preview is out and we have an exciting program for all kinds of developers. Be part...

To meet evolving customer needs across both ends of the database size spectrum, we are lowering the price of SQL Azure and introducing a 100MB database option. Customers will realize 48% to 75% savings for databases larger than 1GB. The 100MB DB option...